Urban Water Pricing Balancing Financial Viability and Social Fairness
A special issue of Water (ISSN 2073-4441). This special issue belongs to the section "Urban Water Management".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 December 2026
Special Issue Editors
Interests: water supply networks; water resources; hydraulics; fluid mechanics
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Interests: innovative management techniques for water resources and for water systems; seismic reliability of hydraulic structures; risk assessment for transportation and storage facilities in water systems; hydraulic protection of territories; experimental analysis on hydraulic prototypes; stormwater tanks and overflow chambers for the mitigation of pollution caused by first flushes in sewers; probabilistic approaches for the evaluation of the effects of climate changes on river flows and land desertification
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Interests: hydraulics of closed and open conduits; flows of closed and open conduits; experimental measurements (hot-film anemometry; particle image velocimetry); computational hydraulics; flows in porous media; gravity currents in lock-exchange experiments; buoyant jets in closed and open conduits
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Urban water utilities increasingly face a complex and persistent dilemma: how to set water service prices that ensure financial sustainability while maintaining socially equitable access for all consumers. Rapid urbanization, aging infrastructure, climate-related pressures, and tightening regulatory requirements are driving operational costs upward. To remain viable, utilities must secure sufficient revenue to fund maintenance, rehabilitation, and long-term capital investments. However, tariff increases often place disproportionate burdens on low-income households, deepening affordability challenges and raising concerns regarding the human right to safe and affordable water.
Balancing these opposing imperatives requires a nuanced approach that integrates cost-reflective pricing with targeted social protection mechanisms. Innovative tariff structures, such as increasing block tariffs, lifeline rates, and income-adjusted subsidies, offer potential pathways to reconcile economic efficiency with social fairness. At the same time, transparent governance, stakeholder engagement, and data-driven decision-making are essential for maintaining public trust.
In this context, urban water pricing becomes more than a technical exercise; it is a negotiation between ethics and economic realism. The challenge for modern utilities is to design pricing frameworks that secure financial resilience while safeguarding universal and equitable access to water services in rapidly evolving urban environments.
Prof. Dr. Vasilis Kanakoudis
Prof. Dr. Francesco De Paola
Dr. Evangelos Keramaris
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
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Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Water is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- urban water services pricing
- resilience
- social fairness
- economic depression
- equitable access
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